Immune System Could Play a Central Role in Age-Related Macular Degeneration

That's interesting stuff, OM. I looked at it because I am noticing a profound difference in my vision lately. I've had an eye health appointment within the last few months and everything seems fine. I'm assuming my vision problems are directly associated with my UC and all the inflammation in my body. My vision is really blurry on some days. It feels really uncomfortable. I've also been experiencing some incidents where my eyes will really start to sting and water, just like I was exposed to something like vinegar vapors.

I hope this is not part of macular degeneration, because I do see that blurry vision is a possible symptom. I don't have any central vision problems.

In all of your researching, do you have a thought on this?

Hmmm, interesting OM. I had early onset (age early fifties) AMD about 10 years before being DXed with UC. My retinal specialist said there are three kinds of wet type AMD. I don't recall the medical terminology he used for them, but he said that the kind I have is usually early onset, stabilizes in about a year, and only effects one eye. All of those turned out to be the case with me, but it has left me with no central vision in my left eye.

I’ve been able to compensate fairly well, and it causes me very little problem, and even have a decent amount of depth perception beyond about 10 feet. Just don’t pick up my golf ball and toss it to me; I’ll just step out of the way. And forget about tennis or baseball or ping pong. And since my left eye had always been dominant, anything requiring aiming like shooting firearms or archery, or even slingshots were done left handed. I had to learn a whole new way of aiming.

Before seeing a retinal specialist I let a general practice Ophthalmologist talk me into photo (laser) cauterization of the bleeders in my retina. I’d suggest that you consider very carefully before going there, it didn’t help at all as more bleeders just popped out later, and it destroyed the portion of my retina that he lased. All it did was exacerbated an already bad situation.

Yeah, my opthamologist confirmed that I have AMD and catarracts.  My left eye is pretty well ****ed. Mainly because it was 'lazy' to start with, (measles as a toddler) My right eye has early catarracts but not bad enough to prohibit me from driving.  I cope pretty well but the sun-light seems to bother me a lot more than it ever did prior to UC.  Gotta wear the polarized clip-ons even on the duller days.  Seems kinda foggy a lot of the time but you tend to compensate for vision defects, the way I have always adjusted for the lack of 3D.  I always sucked at ball games where you have to actually 'catch' a ball and have never appreciated what all the fuss about 3D films is about! The opthamologist said that 7 years on and off prednisone is mostly to blame for my AMD.   How refreshing.